Half Notes: Jane Cross, keeping music files safe

Scoring Notes

For the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some interviews that we did with members of MOLA, An Association of Performance Librarians, at their annual conference in June. We’re calling these brief conversations “Scoring Half Notes”.

In today’s segment, we talk with Jane Cross, a music archivist at the Library of Congress. She’s been in that position nearly three years, and before that, was a librarian with the prestigious United States Marine Band for 22 years; 11 of those as chief librarian.

At the MOLA conference, Jane delivered a presentation entitled “Bits and Bytes: Managing All Those Digital Music Files”. It’s a topic we turn to from time to time here on Scoring Notes, and we loved catching up with an actual archivist to tell us how to be our best selves in this area. Even if you weren’t present for Jane’s discussion, we’ve included a link to her presentation and a very helpful risk mitigation worksheet. You’ll want to remember the acronym LOCKSS: “Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”.

Bits and Bytes: Managing All Those Digital Music Files:

• Digital Preservation in the Performance Library
• Digital Preservation Risk Mitigation Worksheet

More from Scoring Notes:

• MOLA 2022: Advancements in music notation software
• MOLA 2022 conference wrap-up